EricWiberg

Well, that went well... the card template fits as well as I can make it fit right now. Guess I can take a deep breath and next step is... glue the hull together. Whew - started down this beakhead bulkhead/head redesign process on Dec 27.... I did miss 5 weeks of ship time in March/April, so it has only been three months, not four.... The one observation that I have is that I was hoping to make the head look a little longer and lower than it is. It is clearly longer than the kit, but - and here is just another one of many compromises that must be made - I opted to capture the 40 degree steeve of the bowsprit for a 1660-70 period ship. Or, I could have stayed with a steeve of 31-32 and I would have my lower head, but not an accurate bowsprit angle!

So... hopefully my next post will be showing cardboard templates of head rails... but first..... I needed to trim down the top surface of the upper knee. Note the cardboard template is much thinner than the current styrene version as it tapers on its run to the back of the figurehead (I cut the cardboard template off where the base of the figurehead sits on the lower knee for ease of use). The hair bracket is lightly sketched in... it will be 5mm in width at the stem and will taper to 1-2mm in width by the time it reaches the base of the figurehead. However, the top edge of the upper knee needs to: 1) duplicate the curve of the hair bracket and 2) have an even 2mm rise above the hair bracket curve. This 2mm rise above the hair bracket will support the head rail support brackets... BIG thanks to Marc LaGuardia for helping me to understand this relationship! So... I am going to start making cardboard templates of the top head rail, and go from there. I do have to consider the perspective of my sketch, though, as the sketch is only 2-dimensional, and the distance from the top of the beakhead bulkhead to the rosette is a straight line 100mm in length. However, in the 3-dimensional world of the model, the straight line length is 120mm or so, as indicated by the needle file. So maybe I just have to make a copy of my sketch, and lengthen it by 20% to lengthen the head rail? Regardless, I expect there will be a lot of trial and error here, but this is a required and critical step. Once the knees and the head rails and the fifurehead all fit perfectly... then the hull can be glued together. That sort of scares me, as that means painting is coming, and that will be a whole new learning experience!

We shall see, Marc... but I am certainly glad that I finally took your observations about drawing/creating on vellum to heart. I had made rough sketches of the head structure based on measurements from various VDV drawings. Now, as I draw on the vellum to try and be precise to the millimeter, it turns out that after scanning the hull and head structure onto vellum and cross-checking the proportions... I lucked into the exact head structure proportions that I was trying to achieve. However, that was mostly luck! There is no way that I could attempt to make the head rails and support brackets without having a very good drawing. And... gee, have you heard me say this before? - it turned out to be one heck of a lot easier than I assumed! Here are several of the head structures that I was trying to emulate... especially Royal Duc, the little sister. After looking at some of these Dutch ships, it seemed that there heads were plain and not dressed up. I was wondering if SR 1671 might be "staid and conservative"" in that respect.However, Royal Duc (and Royal Louis) seem to be taking the approach that any area is a good area for Baroque. Since SR 1671 was intended to showcase the magnificence of Louis 14... well, Royal Duc has a lot going on with the head and the beakhead bulkhead, so SR 1671 must be at comparable..

In order to create card templates for my head rails, I need a precise pattern. I finally got around to drawing on vellum. I scanned in the ship hull and new head parts that I created, and then saved than scan. I then printed it on vellum directly from the printer, and I had a pretty good template. It took me several hours of measuring and drawing with French curves after looking at a number of VDV drawings to try and capture that "older" type of Dutchy head rail. I was satisfied with the somewhat finished drawing on the right. There - I had the basis to start cutting head rail card templates! Except... something wasn't quite right... I laid the hull on the vellum drawing for a final check... and it was off. I discovered that my vellum drawing was 4.9% smaller than the original... that sounds small, but it was plenty big enough to create seemingly huge errors! I rescanned again, and got the same result?? I checked Google, and apparently "minor" scan size errors are not uncommon; it suggested a few minor fixes. The print on the left is now exactly the same size as the original scanned drawing.... so I will print the drawing on the left on vellum, and draw the head railings again.

OK, the fit is so much better with this stem padding. On to the head rails... Note to self. In the future, make sure polystyrene work doesn't have to be flexed to fit into place... it should fit without stress/strain, if possible.

My goal of building as much of the "from scratch" head structure in advance and to also have a precise fit is not going to work with my current stem padding piece. I wanted to make the stem thicker, a uniform 5mm thick when viewed from the side, and 6mm wide when viewed from the front. I also created slots that match the kit openings in the hull, so the tabs on the head pieces lock into the hull. The problem is that I built a straight piece that needs to be flexed to the curve of the stem; it fits perfectly, but pushes like a spring so I simply cannot get the head structure to sit nice and tight (at least without glue, but I can't glue yet). So I need a curved stem padding piece that fits with no bending stress/strain. Back to the drawing board. I scanned the hull to get the precise shape of the stem. Then a card template was made and affixed to 2mm thick thick styrene and it was drilled out. After wasting away the excess and then some sanding, the new stem padding piece fits precisely with no bending/flexing required. Now I just need to follow the same process and make several other curves so I can laminate them together to make a 6mm wide piece (viewed fore to aft). Now, the head piece tabs will insert through the padding into the hull, where I can use small clamps on the tabs to hold them firmly on the inside. So maybe 2 steps forwards, and now one back.... but I will get much better results as I create the head structure.

Well, the rough scribing of the port side of the knee of the head is done... just some cleaning up amd prettying up is required. I used two techniques to scribe: 1) a Tamiya scriber against French curves, and 2) Marc's technique using a very sharp blade to score the styrene. Both techniques produce excellent results; if I couldn't clamp a French curve to use as an edge, I was very comfortable in using Marc's technique. And I have to say again, this was another example of scratch building on this kit that I was initially a tad bit worried about - "can I actually do this?" - and with patience and the right tools and advice from experienced builders like Marc... it was so much easier than I expected... and fun!

Marc's taper explanation above really helped... in simple terms for my mind, it means that even though the curve of the cutwater viewed from the side may be a curve 6" long, the ocean sees the frontal view, and the curve now appears to be a simple straight piece only 4" top to bottom, but the taper must appear even as Marc drew. I also tried to evenly plane down the thickness from leading edge back to the stem... Next, I monkeyed around for an hour penciling and erasing and finally came up on a joinery/scarf joint pattern that looks plausible- to me! Now... the fun part comes... the actual scribing. The only way - with my resources- that I can do this is to clamp the French Curves that made the lines directly to the knee of the head piece so I have an edge to scribe against. No way I could ever scribe freehand without an edge! As soon as I finish a particular scribe on one side, I will immediately flip the piece over and reclamp and scribe the companion line...

I carved out some early morning time today, and the goal was to start tapering the cutwater appearance for the knee of the head. First, I wanted to subtly change the shape of the knee of the head so that it is not one long curve from base to the figurehead, so where my finger is pointed, there is a now a slight indent. Next, I established the waterline, as my operating assumption is that from the waterline up to to base of the figurehead, there is little to no taper. Nexy, I sketched in some very rough guidelines to indicate how all of the pieces of the knee of the head were attached. Not the final lines, of course, but I will scribe in the final lines after the tapering process. I did this because my assumption is that only pieces "A" and "B" were tapered ("A" and "B" is penciled in on the piece) in other words, just the very leading edge of cutwater. Finally, this is a head on view. Believe it or not, the width at the top (i.e. above the waterline) is 6.25mm, and it gradually tapers down to 4.25mm at the base. Too me, there seems to be very little visible taper at this point, even though it is there. Again, my assumption that only "A" and "B" pieces will be tapered might be wrong, but I can't believe that all of the individual pieces that make up the knee of the head would all be tapered in unison, starting at the stem and marching forward to the cutwater, at least below the waterline. It is not razor blade sharp as in the clipper photo that I posted just abve this, but it does seem to be more in line with the Zeven Provincean photo that Marc also posted just above.

Marc, that second photo is very helpful and really shows the taper

I found this example of a tapered cutwater on another blog of Model Ship World... granted, it is a clipper ship some 150 years AFTER Soleil Royal, but it really shows the taper of the cuwater as it descends downward...

That makes sense, Marc. How far back from the leading edge did you start the taper? It looks like your taper goes from full width at the figurehead to... perhaps 2/3s of full width at the foot?

I have a question to the void... and it has to do with the taper of the cutwater. I know that the cutwater is tapered, thinner at the leading edge that "cuts through the water", as Marc LaGuardia noted in his post #1307. I think I have seen other references in blogs/books, but I am drawing a blank after 6 weeks away! As I hold the knee of the head, the thickness is 6.5mm, whch matches the kit dimensions. What I can't figure out is exactly what piece(s) gets tapered... here is the St Phillipe monograph, and the knee of the head is built of many pieces fastened together (I plan to scribe these lines in). Mu assumption is that only the leading edge piece(s) underwater needs to be tapered. My index finger is pointing at piece "A"... my middle finger is pointing at a smaller unlabeled piece. and in the lower right of the picture is another much smaller piece that you can partially see. So... I assume that only these three leading edge pieces are tapered, say from 6.5mm thickness at the stem to 4.0mm foreward where it cuts through the ocean? (I don't recall seeing any (proportions or guidelines anywhwere). Now, the piece that my middle finger is pointing to is well above the waterline, but I assume that it is has to be tapered down back to front to match the much longer piece "A" underneath it. I saw a website on the USS Constitution project, and they rebuilt some of the knee of the head and they clearly state there is a taper. But no mention of the dimensions and I can't see the taper in the pix. Oh.. and thos was another book that I managed to read in the past 6 weeks.

Well, it has been a long six weeks away from the shipyard... at least I had a lot of time to dig into the "Das barocke Schiffsheck......" a very interesting and informative book! I had to stare at the ship for a few minutes to remember what I had been about to do next.... ahh, the head rail development! But first, a little minor fitting work on the figurehead. I won't know for sure on the fitting of all of these scratch built pieces until they are glued in... but I think I can get 95% of the way there by constant fitting and checking. On to the head rails...

Very brief update... a 5 week hiatus away from ship building, much like last year at this time. However, like last year, I get to read books and review all kinds of SR blogs, which really helps me visualize. And.. this book arrived! As Marc has stated, it is really quite interesting and should prove a tremendous resource!